George Richards, FHN Publisher
The Florida Panthers have cast a wide net in their search for a new GM and, according to team president Matt Caldwell, they are getting close in making a final decision.
Expect an announcement soon — perhaps as early as Wednesday morning.
It has been just over three weeks since the Panthers officially parted ways with longtime general manager Dale Tallon and Caldwell has been busy interviewing potential replacements.
Caldwell spoke with FloridaHockeyNow.com on Tuesday evening on a variety of subjects including: What the team is looking for a new GM, whether or not owner Vinnie Viola has set an internal salary cap for next season and when the decision was made to move on from Tallon.
“We have to get this right,” Caldwell said of the GM search. “We have to get this team right. We are getting real close to a decision.
“We have some great candidates.”
Caldwell said the Panthers’ search reached about two dozen potential candidates with he and Michael Viola conducting the first round of interviews via video conference.
”It was great having another set of eyes and ears,” Caldwell said of having one of Vinnie Viola’s sons involved in the process.
“It just goes to show how committed the family is to this.”
As far as the follow-ups went, Caldwell was joined by Vinnie Viola — with coach Joel Quenneville being kept in the loop.
“Joel has been very professional, has told us he trusts we’ll select the right person following this process,” Caldwell said of Quenneville’s role in the selection process.
“I have bounced a number of ideas off of him. With Joel, he doesn’t want to be the GM. We’re trying to build a team of character, one that can compete and take us to the next level. We have some great players. We need someone to help us get to the next level.
”Joel has a very distinct way about how he wants to win and we’re trying to marry him with the right partner to get us there. We have a lot of work to do, need to do things better. It’s a tough needle to thread.
“Joel is not picking the guy and doesn’t want it to appear that way. But, he is a big factor in this. If I saw someone who I didn’t think could work with Joel … we’re not picking him. But we’re also not just picking Joel’s buddy. We’re looking for the best person for the job.”
The Panthers are very close to making their final decision and are in talks with their finalists.
Before getting into my Q&A with Caldwell, there are some things to clean up:
Caldwell did confirm a report from Larry Brooks of the New York Post that Rangers’ assistant GM Chris Drury pulled himself out of the running for the Florida vacancy.
He did deny speculation from Sportsnet’s Elliott Friedman that Drury was on the verge of or had been offered the job.
”Chris did withdraw but I don’t think it was the right fit on both sides,” Caldwell said. “He has got a great situation with the Rangers. But he is still a little new to the front office so … it was mutual. We did not offer him the job. We both mutually decided it wasn’t a fit.”
Among the names of the candidates which have been widely circulating, add Columbus ASG Bill Zito to the list.
Zito, according to Caldwell, is “on the list” perhaps meaning he is one of the finals — although Caldwell would not get into specifics.
Various reports Tuesday have the Panthers close to announcing Zito as the new GM.
Caldwell, without mentioning finalists, said the team is looking at someone with experience in working in a daily front office.
He was quick to point out that he did not necessarily mean previous GMs who applied — such as Vancouver’s Mike Gillis, Peter Chiarelli from Boston/Edmonton or Philadelphia’s Ron Hextall.
But it does sound like those who have not worked in a team’s front office, such as NBC’s Ed Olcyzk and NHL Network’s Kevin Weekes, may not have the experience Florida is looking for.
Those currently or previously working as assistant GMs such as Zito, Bill Armstrong (St. Louis), former Panthers’ captain Scott Mellanby (Montreal), Chris MacFarland (Colorado), Mike Futa (LA Kings) and Laurence Gilman (Toronto) fit that bill.
The new GM will be in charge of Florida’s hockey operations department.
Experience working in a front office seems to be paramount.
“We can’t have someone learning on the job here,” Caldwell said. “There are a lot of guys who have been assistant GMs who have experience and are ready to take the next step.”
Also: Eric Joyce, Florida’s assistant GM, is not a candidate for the full-time job and did not formally interview for it.
Joyce, who has been with the Panthers since 2013 and was a co-GM of the team during the 2016-17 season, is expected to remain with the organization and will report to the new GM.
“We told Eric that we just didn’t think he was ready,” Caldwell said. “He has only been with one organization, really has worked under one GM. He has done some great things with us, but we need a fresh set of eyes.
“We need someone to come into the organization who has done a good job elsewhere.
‘We need someone to look at everything we do in hockey ops. We’re not experts in it, but a lot of people tell us we have some really good players but something is not clicking. We just feel a fresh person needs to come in.”
Q&A with Panthers’ team president Matt Caldwell
Was it just time to move on from Dale Tallon?
It was all about performance. The results kind of speak for themselves. Vinnie bought the team seven years ago and we have been to the playoffs once. At the end of the day, we have to win. Vinnie is a great leader, takes full responsibility for us getting knocked off track (in 2016) a little bit with some of the front office issues we had.
Vinnie empowered Dale, gave him time to fix some of the issues that happened then. We thought we were going to take a big step forward this year — and while we didn’t think we were going to win the Stanley Cup, at minimum, we had to make the playoffs spending to the cap with Joel Quenneville as coach.
Dale was upset, he wanted to see this thing through. At the end of the day, he understood the performance was not there and we needed to go in a different direction.
Was the decision made before going to Toronto?
No. If we played well in the playoffs, we were willing to continue to work with him. This was not a preordained thing. February was rough. We went into the All-Star Game humming, we were firmly in a playoff spot. Then we had a rough stretch, got better and then COVID hit.
We were just trying to survive at that point. Dale’s contract or anything else went to the background. Things just didn’t work out. After the Islanders series, we took that Friday to decompress. On Saturday, we had long meetings with the Viola family and decided it was time to go in a different direction.
What has the interview process been like?
I have spoken to probably two dozen people for like two, three-hours each. My days have been doing one interview at 9 a.m. then another at 1 in the afternoon. We have done Zoom for the majority of them and then we chose six to do follow ups. Now we’re down to a couple. We’re still still grappling with some things.
We probably could have spoken to more people because you want to be broad. But you also want to be thorough. You could talk to 100 people, but that would be hard to have meaningful conversation. It would be like speed dating. We tried to do as many as we could that were genuine and could get deep, people we thought we had a shot at.
I still have a laundry list of people who have reached out and interested.
Was Chris Pronger ever a candidate?
No, Prongs’ contract was coming up and he did have interest in his travel business. Every thing he has said about it has been accurate. He never moved to Florida, still lived in St. Louis. With COVID, it was hard for us to talk about the future (with him) when we didn’t know what the future was going to look like.
Chris came to Dale, asked about the contract … we extended everyone past June until whenever the end of our season would be. He decided he wanted to pursue the travel business with his wife.
He was with us three years, and I don’t know what his next role was going to be. I don’t know if Dale was trying to groom him to be his successor. But (Pronger) hasn’t gone to another team.
I think he just had different career aspirations. Whether it was Florida, New York, Chicago … he’s going to have to move to that area. I think they want to stay living in St. Louis and that is a factor.
How much work does ownership think the roster needs?
That’s not really our decision. Financially, it is. But we want a new GM to come in and give this a fresh look, talk with Joel and make sure they are aligned with a team identity and chart a path forward. It’s not our role to dictate what needs to be done. When they have a budget, we’ll have that talk.
Listen, we want to win. Vinnie has said that since Day 1. I think we have done a good job of turning the team around from where it was in 2013. Our first year, we were second from the bottom in the league. There had been some rough years. We were one of the bottom teams and now we’re, I guess you could say, a playoff bubble team.
We’re right on the cusp and last summer, we thought we were making the moves to take that next step. It didn’t work out. Maybe it’s COVID related, whatever. But we have to make moves to get better. We’re not focusing on the roster but getting a GM in place, get him up and running and go to the draft. We have to hit on the draft picks, free agency. We’re taking this step-by-step.
With the flat cap, lack of revenue streams, is there an internal salary cap which is lower than the $77 million (after dead/retained money) you have the spend?
We have gone back-and-forth on this and we’re not setting a internal budget number. It’s all about bringing in a GM and I will work very closely with him day-to-day.
We’ll look at what we need. There’s no set number. Things change in this world so fast, it is hard to stick to a number high or low. There might be opportunities in a post-COVID world.
The bottom line is Vinnie remains extremely committed to winning. He wants to do whatever it takes, but wants to spend wisely. He wants to make sure there is a vision, a team identity which is established.